Customer Reviews

Timeshare: Second Time Around

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is tremendous fun. The section on the Algonquin Round Table is hilarious. Full of clever lines and the ambience is excellent. Why not five stars? The plot is a little weak, and the main story question gets pushed aside for a lecture on the evils of J. Edgar, et al. Fiction--or a position paper? Even so, A-.

I didn't want this book to end. I'm not a fan of stories containing extremely complicated characters and plot lines, but I also love a good story that plays on some of the paridoxes of time travel. This story satisfied both. I have not read the first book yet...which is why I'm visiting this site....I want anything this author has written.

I just finished Timeshare: Second Time Around, Joshua Dann's second trip into the past and here I am looking for his next book! His first book was GREAT, the second was BETTER !!. I echo the sentiments of the previous reviewer. I hope Mr. Dunn continues the adventures of John Surrey and company into a many volumed series.

SECOND TIME AROUND is a wonderful book in how it captures the 1920s and time travel. The plot and setting is vividly caught in a neat style. However, there are few redeeming qualities about the narrator. He continually "grabs" his girlfriend (and gets quite possessive over her during one scene at a nightclub) and constantly refers to her beauty and the fact that they make love every night.

He also likes to pat himself on the back a lot in his relations with people and comes across as patronizing rather than sincere. He "conveniently" solves Dorothy Parker's problems by "giving" her a man and fails to remember that there were women at the Algonquin Table as well as men. (This fact can be verified by several reference sources.)

It seems that he has confused being old fashioned (which is fine) with being ignorant (women aren't helpless). Way too much time is spent on the fact that FBI director Hoover was gay, as if that were the reason he was corrupt.

While it is true that Althea is given the opportunity to help with the protagonist's problems, she is often left behind and patronized. Hopefully, Mr. Dann's third book in the third series (about World War 11) will give Althea her due. This storyteller is definitely talented and able to keep the reader glued to the page. Maybe next time he'll leave out the subtle sexism and homophobia.

I saw these books after seeing something on Facebook that directed me to this author. I'm so glad I did! Joshua Dann writes exactly the type of time travel book I love, putting characters in that were famous but aren't with us any longer. I read this book out of order because it came in first (I ordered all 3 of them but from different sellers). I couldn't wait to get the first one to start on my "journey" so I started reading it. I couldn't put it down! The first one has finally come in and I've started that one as well. These are definetely books I will recommend and re-read.

This is the second in a trilogy of time travel books by this author. It is a fairly entertaining, quick read that is plot driven with little effort given to character development. The time travel premise is centered on Timeshare Unlimited, a time travel agency that books time travel into the past for its exclusive clientele.

Enter, John Surrey, head of security for Timeshare Unlimited. When one of its clients turns up missing while traveling in the past during the time of the Roaring Twenties, it is up to Surrey to get his man and bring him home. His client leads Surrey on a merry chase in the past, and when Surrey finds his missing client, he also discovers why the client engineered his mysterious disappearance.

The aspects of the book dealing with the past are entertaining and ripe with historical detail. Where the book palls, however, is in terms of its characters, which seem somewhat wooden. Still, this is fairly fun read for those who enjoy time travel themes.

I bought this and the subsequent volume of the series new, on a cold grey day in NYC when I was feeling miserable enough to actually enter a full price bookstore and spring for something readable. Some of my purchases during this period justified the, to me, huge expense & moral failure I still associate with buying new; some didn't. Joshua Dann topped the list of the ones which did. I agree with both the positive and the negative reviews from everyone here. It's lightweight, shallow; readable; fun, sweet; and it holds your attention. Most important from my point of view, to return to the $$$ angle again, it's got enough substance to bear at least 4 re-readings in 10 years--i.e., you can divide the expense by 4.

I didn't give the matter any more thought than that until I realized that nobody else I knew seemed to have heard of the books, and that they were out of print. They have too many little touches that are different from most time travel to be allowed to sink out of sight. Among my favorites: period specific knowledge of smoking. The 1940s girlfriend smokes, & when she visits the future she has to hide away, and resents it, because she comes from a time when everyone smokes--as Dann notes, even Jesse Owens smoked. Another treat: long conversation with a Pullman porter

In other words, what I really like about Dann is his interest in what daily life feels like in diffent times. There isn't all that much fiction that captures that. Quantum Leap was good at it; at one point in Jack Finney's great work his hero notices how much more alive and cheerful the people of his grandpaernts' time seem; and then there's....what? Nothing really springs to mind.

In case it's not obvious from this review, I am a former smoker born in 1949, just old enough to have had a memorable encounter at 4 with one of the godlike astonishing Pullman porters and to have read my mother's movie magazines from the '20s. I've lived in all the times since with a feeling of travelling thru many countries, and I've often been baffled by how seldom other people seem to have experienced the passing decades in the same way.

Anyway, I hope this confession of reviewer prejudice makes someone give Dann's books a second look. He'll never go down in history as one of the greats, even in the tiny world of time travel fiction. But to me he is, or should be, one of those minor classics that wears well, the kind each reading generation stumbles on with delight.

I try to re-read this series a couple times a year. I Googled Joshua Dann and found a web site is the UK that says he is also writing under the name J. D. Austin.

I didn't want this book to end. I'm not a fan of stories containing extremely complicated characters and plot lines, but I also love a good story that plays on some of the paridoxes of time travel. This story satisfied both. I have not read the first book yet...which is why I'm visiting this site....I want anything this author has written.

I couldn't get this book fast enough. After having read the first Timeshare novel in 2 sessions, I locked myself away, and devoured the 2nd. This book is full of well written, interesting characters, and fantastic encounters with the world of 1926. John Surrey is back in top form as the head security guard for "Timeshare," and this time around, he's back in 1926 trying to find a super rich client who has managed to escape from Timeshare. What follows is a fun romp through 1926 in an effort to follow him, and find out why he's vanished. As with the first novel, there are of course, paradoxes and problems that arise with time travel; but they are handled in fresh and highly imaginitive ways, setting this book aside from the many 'dull' and 'same-old' time travel stories out there. Give the book a chance, you'll be glad you did.